


Meet Your Gaze

by AllesandraQ, sunshatteredseas



Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: A mage hawke that sided with the templars, Adamant Fortress, Gen, Herald's Rest, Here Lies the Abyss, Skyhold, invading each other's canons and universes, some swears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 01:49:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14438892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllesandraQ/pseuds/AllesandraQ, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshatteredseas/pseuds/sunshatteredseas
Summary: Zeus Hawke is not well liked by many and his visit to Skyhold to help out Inquisitor Trevelyan is one that tests them both. However the true tests comes in Fade, during the battle at Adamant.This was written as a part of collaboration effort between the DA subreddit and DAOC Discord between me, AshLyn32, and Darklikehersun.





	Meet Your Gaze

**Author's Note:**

> This is a collaboration between two people- me and darklikehersun from reddit (Sunshatteredseas on here )My Zeus Hawke invaded her Trevelyan's universe. 
> 
> For background information, my Zeus Hawke is a Red Mage, who sided with the templars at the end of DA2. http://daoce.wikia.com/wiki/Zeus_Hawke
> 
> Darklikehersun's Trevelyan- http://daoce.wikia.com/wiki/Trevelyan

**Skyhold-The Herald's Rest**

 

 

 

The first thing she notices is the scowl.

Not remarkably out of place, Trevelyan supposes, and it's not like Skyhold was bursting with joy at the thought of Adamant's siege. Still, there was a difference between the weary hope of most she saw drinking their sorrows away and the bitterness that twisted the face underneath the hood, obscured by shadow in the booth at the back.

She has a inkling as to who it might be, if inkling meant hours of personal experience and one very talkative dwarf using colorful invectives to describe a raging temper, and a strong desire to tell him to get his feet off her table.

She knows what it’s like to have no time but moments carved out in the shadows. She also knows that Zeus Hawke probably doesn’t need one more annoyance, even if a part of her is itching to do exactly that, and bring up the Kirkwall Circle while she’s at it.

_Be better, dear. Be patient._ It’s her mother’s voice speaking to her from the depths of her mind, and she wonders what fresh hell she has landed in, to find herself agreeing.

She turns around and takes one step for the door, two--when the figure speaks.

“Oh don’t run away,” his rough, challenging voice drawls out, a spark of bitter amusement hidden beneath a terse tone. “Although perhaps making the Inquisitor unwilling to be in my company just piles on the reasons to dislike me.” A shrug. “No skin off my nose.”

Well. It might as well have been an open invitation, for all that Varric had described. She would certainly take it as such.

She walks back to the table and sets the heavy stack of papers down with a thud. “I am hardly unwilling to be in the company of one as esteemed as you, _Champion_. Adamant’s layout and troop rotations, complements of Commander Cullen.”

Zeus hardly flinches, a smirk arranging itself on his face. He arches an eyebrow, drops his feet and sits up to take a look at them. His hood comes off, showing off the rest of his messy hair, and the smirk drops as he studies the papers, eyes serious.  
  
“Commander Cullen, now… grew into the balls he developed when he stood in front of Stannard,” he says, looking at the parchments.

She snorts in spite of herself, and whatever semblance of calm professionalism she had tried to hold onto before is thrown out of the window. “And was it you standing behind Meredith, guarding her back against any evil mages fleeing for their lives, as all evil mages do?”  
  
Zeus taps his fingers against one parchment, and she finds herself meeting his eyes. She remembers what had once been light brown in their first meeting were a blazing golden in the light.

“Hardly,” he shrugs. “I was guarding my templar brother’s back  and taking my father’s staff back from Anders, who wasted his chance to continue living. I was keeping what was left of my family alive, as well as myself. The mages themselves didn’t exactly do them any favors with what Orsino revealed himself to be.  But of course, Varric left most those details out of his bloody shit of a book. Have to make sure it sells right?” He scoffs, and his attention returns to the papers splayed beneath his fingers. At least, some of it; his shoulders are tense as he waits for an answer, one that she doesn’t know how to give.

Trevelyan doesn’t know what to say, to the barely concealed bitterness in his voice or the way his eyes glitter when he mentions his brother--Carver, she recalls. A templar stationed at the Gallows, no doubt torn between supporting his maleficarum brother and his duty to the Order. And Hawke, stuck in the crossfire, trying to keep his family safe…

They were all trying to keep their families safe. And he had decided which families mattered more.

“You had no right to choose their fate for them,” she says, staring back into those bronze eyes, burning like a candle. “It may not have been your decision to destroy the Chantry, or your decision to plunge Kirkwall into war, but it was you who stood by as Meredith rampaged through the halls of the Gallows. And it might’ve been you on the other end of the sword, had your life been different.”

 

 

**************  
**   


 

 

If his life had been different.

_Oh, if only_.

Zeus was beginning to regret giving in to Merrill and Varric's demands he come here. He knew no matter what, things would be much worse than Kirkwall. And they were. Especially with the damn Tevinter Magister, Erimond involved. What had been revealed in the Western Approach just confirmed how insane everything got.

Then again, anything involving demons and blood magic made sure things always got insane.

But he had to hand it to this Inquisitor. At least for her opinion. She was not treating him like he was Corypheus, which most of the mages here were doing. And she was not spouting the same view point as that... mage Vivienne did.

  
He looks away from her to take a drink, setting his gaze briefly on the parchments in front of him before turning his attention back to her.

At least she appeared to want to listen, to understand. If only to probably yell at him some more. He's used to that.  Not many people seemed to care about what he wanted to say regarding what happened, seeming to think Varric's little book had all the answers.

"I did not want to choose," he shrugs. "If I could have let the mages and templars battled it out without having to get involved, then I would have. All I cared about was keeping the ones I loved safe. Carver. Merrill. Varric. But I had to make a choice. But in the end, their fate was sealed the moment the Chantry blew. It wouldn't have mattered whose side I chose, people would have still died. I would still be vilified by one side, and war would eventually break out even if there was a possibility I could have stopped one from happening. I just chose the templars side, and because I'm a mage, it appears to be worse."  
  
He takes another drink. “Have to say, I half expected you to be in agreement with that mage, Vivienne. Although if I had to listen to her tell me I did the right thing one more time, even though she truly knows nothing about any of what took place in Kirkwall, I would have probably lost my temper and then be really unwelcome here.”

He gets a half smile of sorts, and to him it fits. He didn’t expect a smile in the first place, so the fact he got even half of one.. "Vivienne plays the Game excellently. You may despise her politics and her opinions, but that you cannot deny."

She pauses, shakes her head. “I...understand, what it’s like to have no easy option out. To weigh those you love against the others, and know your answer there and then. Perhaps the difference in us lies in what exactly that answer was.”

Zeus deliberates for a moment  and then decides to do it. “I’m going to tell you something, Inquisitor, that I haven’t told anyone, including Varric. My father said this to me once, when we were still speaking to each other “

She says nothing, but nods. Acknowledgement or encouragement, he isn’t certain.  
  
“He said, and I will quote him as best as he can, ‘Whatever you do in life, make sure you can look at yourself in the mirror when it’s done. Otherwise, whatever resolution you had towards the act is for nothing. If you cannot  face yourself in the mirror, after the deed is done, then you are a coward.’ “ Zeus pauses. “He said a lot of other things, things I didn’t agree with, things that caused endless fights between us, but that… that stuck with me.”

He looks directly at her this time, meeting her gaze head one once more. “I did what I had to do Inquisitor. I don’t care what anyone else honestly thinks of me because of it, because they weren’t there. They were not the ones that had to make the choice, then look themselves in the mirror. I am. And I do. I face myself every day, I can meet my gaze, and that is what matters to me.”

 

 

**************

 

 

**“** Champion.”

Zeus grimaces, makes a sound similar to ones she has heard from Cassandra. “That damned title. Add in Viscount as well, two titles I never wanted nor encouraged to have laid on me. Given to me by pompous assholes and weak idiots who until that day never had to worry about anything. Nobles thought it entitled them unlimited access to me, while those that lived beneath their heel saw me as some sort of protector and liberator, when I was neither and did not want to be viewed as such.” His words are filled with aggravation and if she listens to it, she hears the exhaustion as well.

  
“The Arishok called them fat dathrasi,” He says after a minute. “Feed and feed, then complain only when their meal is interrupted.. That they did not look up, they did not see the grass is bare, all they leave in their wake is misery.” He lets out a hollow laugh. “He saw the truth of Kirkwall. As much as Varric loves it, he does not see it for the miserable hell hole that city really is.”

“Are you always this disagreeable, or am I privileged enough to bear witness?” She turns away from the stone balcony, back to the Champion--back to Hawke, sitting in the fading light shining through the drawing room’s stained light. In front of them lies the papers of Adamant, walls of text to represent the blood spilled and the sovereigns already spent on the task ahead.

They are both studiously ignoring it, although Trevelyan suspects for different reasons.

He smiles, a slow kind of thing that his face goes into so naturally she is surprised. He looks... _different_ , now. Not unburdened, but perhaps lighter. Younger. “According to Merrill, I am a teddy bear, Inquisitor.”

She quirks an eyebrow, and he shrugs, his attention going back over the plans of Adamant. After a couple minutes, he looks away from them to focus on her.

“I am who I am,” he says quietly. “I am loud, opinionated, mouthy. I am, according to that one source on all things Hawke- an aggressive, disagreeable, direct and blunt man  that does not care who he offends and will speak his mind without recourse nor apology...I know who I am and I accept it.”

He cocks his head to the side, his eyes studying her for what feels like an eternity. “Who are you Inquisitor Trevelyan? And do you accept who you are? Have you made decisions yet that make you question and doubt? When you found out what happened to the templars after you took in the mages and saved them from their superiors stupidity, did you regret your choice? Or were you able to look in the mirror, face yourself and your decision? Have you had to do that yet?”

“So many questions,” she murmurs, sitting back in her chair and drumming her fingertips across the wooden table. “And yet you ask of me such a simple answer.”

His eyes trail her finger down the documents, and watch her face when she returns his quiet, wary gaze. “I wanted this. The burden is mine.” She pauses, and sets the list down with a resounding thud. “And yes, I can meet my own gaze. ”

He looks at the battle plans for Adamant once more. “Let’s hope you can do so after we breach those walls.” He takes one last drink from his cup, and stands. For a moment there’s nothing, but a shine glimmers next to his right hand, and a staff appears. He glamoured his. “Time for me to get some rest before the battle. Have a good night, Inquisitor.”

A trick of the fading light, but that might’ve been...something _other_ than his ever-present scowl on his face as he looks toward her.

Trevelyan inclines her head, and in a moment, he is gone.  
  
  
  


 

*****************

 

**Adamant- The Fade  
**   
**  
**

 

 

Zeus glared at everything around him.

He was not pleased.

It figures that the attack on Adamant would lead to this. _It figures._

Not enough the Wardens are doing blood magic, were being lead around by the nose on the whims of a pathetic Tevinter magister. Somehow they got through Clarel but fat lot of good it's doing them now. It’s not enough that they had to go through this whole battle to stop everything.

Nope, they are now stuck in the Fade. All of them. Him, Stroud,  the Inquisitor and their own company- Blackwall and Solas (Although if Zeus had to hear that elf lecture in that tone of voice towards him one more time he was going to hit him with a fireball) and of course the one that got him into this mess- Varric.

_Don't be mean to Varric,_ Hawke, he can practically hear Merrill echo in his head.

And now they're dealing with a goddamn Nightmare Demon of all things, a spirit or whatever the hell it is masquerading as the Divine and everything else. People were dying outside and they were stuck here.

Zeus hated the Fade.

_Pity that Merrill isn't here, she'd love this…_

Another reason he wanted out as soon as possible. He didn't  even want to be here at all in the first place, and he had promised Merrill he would come back. He was not going to break a promise to her.

 

 

**(Later)**

 

  
  
  
"Did you think you mattered, Hawke?" Well great, Nightmare was now addressing him. "Did you think anything you ever did, mattered?"

_Fuck you too, Nightmare._

  
"You couldn't even save your city. How could you expect to take down a God?"

Well he doesn't really like Kirkwall, so that did not hurt. He just scowls as they walk, even though he knows the others can hear this. His hand tightens on his staff. But then the next words that come out have him growling, aching to hit something.

"Merrill is going to die. Just like your family. And everyone you ever cared about."

"I'm going to enjoy killing this thing," he snarls.

Then that damned elf, Solas, says something in response to that and Zeus cannot help himself. He spots a spider, and since it’s near Solas, he aims a fireball right at the spider, feeling satisfaction at the flinch from Solas as it just narrowly misses him and engulfs the spider.

“Really? We want to continue bickering, but the Warden is all tuckered out, so we attack the hobo mage instead?” Trevelyan stops walking and turns around, crossing her arms.

"Well if I had not gotten that spider, he would have been knocked on his ass," He says bluntly and turns to said, what did she call him, oh yes, hobo mage. "You’re welcome, by the way," he snaps. He turns back to Trevelyan, his nerves frayed, his  temper on edge ever since the Nightmare addressed him and mentioned Merrill. “Shall we? Before it decides to continue talking again?”

“And here I thought leaving the Circle meant I wouldn’t have to deal with armored idiots with anger issues,” she mutters quietly enough for only him to hear, and continues walking up the steep, slick incline.

For some reason, the insult digs, and he sighs.

_Be nice, Hawke,_ he hears Merrill's voice again.   _Apologize to her._

_I don't apologize_ , he argues, and if he could roll his eyes at himself he would right now.

_You will to her_ , Merrill's voice demands.

He lengthens his stride, and catches up to her, gripping her arm as she's about to slip and helps her up, pushing her towards Blackwall who takes the momentum and helps the Inquisitor get to the top of it.

"Apologies," he murmurs next to her. "It mentioned Merrill and I.." He sighs again. "I never liked the Fade."

She looks at him for a moment, eyes wide. “You really are a teddy bear.”

He hears Varric snicker, glares at his friend--although said friend was pushing it these days--and then glares at her.

Trevelyan shakes her head and sighs. “The places we are taken.” She claps him on the back.

“Try to enjoy it.”

He snorts in disbelief, but as he watches them continue to walk, he hears Merrill one more time.

_She’s nice, Zeus, I want to meet her._

No, no he was not going to return to Skyhold just so…

Yeah, he probably was.

 

 

*********************  


 

“Ellon!” She is a fingertip’s breadth away from him as the walls come crashing down around the council chamber, stone and debris flying in the air, and she is desperately trying make sense of the rubble around her when she sees a leather bracelet carved with the Trevelyan crest and realizes that the air is heavy and thick and around her and she hears the stagnant silence that meant something _wrong_ , something--

The image shifts, dark greys sliding into threads of green, and she is reaching out to an orb, patterned and stamped with a Chantry sunburst. Her hand is shaking. Why is her hand shaking?

She hears a voice that reminds some part of her of a cold, snowy night and a sacrifice she let others make, sees Grey Wardens with cold sneers on their faces and human fear in their eyes, and as the image closes and she is thrown back into the shallow pool where her companions stand--warily, she notices, skittish-- it all snaps into place.

Like magic.

A hand on her shoulder, and she looks up to meet a pair of golden brown eyes. She’s kneeling on the ground and Zeus has kneeled to meet her.  
  
There is concern there.  
  
“Take a moment to gather your bearings,” he says quietly.

She pushes him away, wet hand leaving a smear on armor--she’ll have to apologize for that, no doubt, but the apologies, plural, can come later--and stands shakily. “I’m fine.” 

He frowns. “No, you are not,” he says. “Take a moment for yourself.” His gaze softens. “Your brother?”

“We can discuss later,” she mutters. Her own armor is soaked, her staff’s wood no doubt already starting to warp, and she can feel the artfully hidden stares.

“It will prey on your mind and distract you,” he says firmly. He sighs. “I know what it is like to lose family, Trevelyan. Bethany.. My mother..” He swallows and she sees the pain before he buries it. “I saw what you saw. Your brother?”

“My brother,” she concedes. Enough lives have been lost at her hand already, and she won’t let more die for her pride. “He died, at the Conclave. As I’m sure you saw.”

Her words are stilted, enough so that he can tell, and those careful eyes are tracking her every gesture. Maker, does he ever stop?

She pauses, then continues. “And it was my fault. I suppose I knew it all along.”

Zeus opens his mouth, no doubt to spout some relievement of guilt that he doesn’t believe himself, but she shakes her head. “It was my fault. That won’t change.”

He nods. “People tell me all the time it is not my fault my mother died at the hands of a necromantic blood mage. They’re liars,” he says bluntly, almost harshly. “It is my fault. I accepted it though. So if you think you are at fault, then I will not correct you--”  
  
There is an explosion of outrage behind her, no doubt Blackwall and Solas are not happy with his words but she hears Varric say something, not quite the words itself but hears him, and they quiet. Zeus glares past her and then turns back to her. “Accept it,” he says firmly, “but do not let it moor you. Take your time to gather yourself, and we will move on.”

Trevelyan brushes away the dirt and dark water on her hands, arranges her face into some semblance of calm, and gestures toward the path ahead. “Shall we?”

He arches a brow, and she gives a little chuckle. “We don’t have a lot of time. The Inquisition gives me less.”

Zeus simply nods, and stands. He watches her for a moment longer and then walks past her. She hears Varric say something to him and she hears very clearly “Shut up.”

She chokes on something between a laugh and yell as she stares at them both, Zeus striding forward and Varric’s always cautious steps, glares forward and darting glances of a side of the cliff.

If she closes her eyes, they might be brothers.

 

 

 

*********************

 

 

“Maker…”

“That is, without a doubt, the largest spider I have ever seen.”  
  
“ _Maker_ …”

“I quite agree.”

Zeus shudders as they watch the thousand legged thing descend in front of them, beady eyes piercing. There’s a look in his eyes, as he grips his staff tightly. He glares at Stroud then and she recalls the argument they had after the final memory retrieval.

“By the dread wolf,” he mutters, shaking his head before looking away from the giant spider. She hears a choked cough--probably Stroud, but when she looks over he’s just staring in mute horror.

“This… we cannot defeat this,” Stroud says after a minute, as if it took that long to just get the words out. Zeus snorts and Varric just elbows him. “We need to find a way to get past it.”

“Yes. A way past the giant spider. Really, any plan would work, as long as it involves _not_ getting eaten?”

“One of us can be the bait,” Stroud says firmly. “Distract it, keep it occupied while the others get out.”  
  
“And then get left behind and die?” Zeus snarls. “Yes, that is an excellent option, Stroud.”

“We didn’t fight that Revenant-looking asshole to go die,” she mutters, distinctly aware that she should be far more eloquent--but, well, there’s not a lot of dignity to go around, staring at an infinity of black, beady, spidery eyes and contemplating their own mortality.

In the distance, filtered through her own thoughts, she hears Zeus and Stroud arguing, Zeus accepting his role in Corypheus’s escape, but she doesn’t catch what else he says, eyes flickering in green light. Stroud makes his own complaints in response, even as he defends the griffon crest enameled into his armor.

But Stroud is right. Someone has to be the distraction. Someone has to be left. Even if she’s the one who deserves to be.

“Don’t be such a martyr,” Zeus snaps at him, his words clear now.  He sounds angry and frustrated. “You are not doing yourself or your Order any credit. I have a wife to get back to, but what you want to do is suicide, Stroud. Your Order needs you. There has to be a different way.”

She is so tired. So ridiculously, impossibly tired. “You know there isn’t, Champion.”

 

 

 

**************************

 

 

The candle is flickering out by the time she returns to her quarters, flame at the whims of the whispering wind echoing throughout her open chambers. The glass doors to the balcony have been set ajar, and Trevelyan is greeted by a burst of cold air as she manages to stumble in the darkness--hopefully in the correct direction to her desk.

She pulls out a new candle from one of the drawers as she muffles her shout of pain--Inquisitor her ass, she can’t even manage to find a candle without running into something--and lights it with a flick of her fingers, somehow managing to set it down without dribbling the melted wax across the papers below.

The light is just barely useful in the quiet hum of Skyhold’s rest, and she can barely see the faint outline of Cullen’s handwriting in the dark. For the best, she supposes. Trevelyan thinks it might be better to read it in the daylight, when she’s forced to stay composed.

A knock sounds at the door, and she glances up, a laundry list of worries running through her head as she calls for them to enter. New troop movements? An update on Halamshiral? Brawls in the tavern? Maker, if it’s because Sera dropped eggs on the soldiers again--

“Inquisitor?”

She gives a half-smile. “You sound uncertain.”  
  
"Uncertain?" He sounds disgusted by that word, but there is no heat behind them. Instead he sounds like he looks.

Zeus looks exhausted and wrung out, candlelight from the corridor around him forming a hazy silhouette, even though it's been a couple days since they returned. A fresh bruise forming at his jaw.

The man is dressed as if he is  ready to leave, pack and staff in hands, cloak over his armor.

“So eager to leave Skyhold? The food isn’t great, sure, but if you think _that’s_ bad…” She trails off, staring at the barely visible papers. “Tell Merrill hello, yes?” Trevelyan smiles at the way his eyes soften.

“More than likely, she’ll want to come here and meet you,” he sounds disgruntled. “And after collecting her, I have to stop at Weisshaupt, since I have another promise to keep. So you might have to prepare yourself for me stopping by once more before I do.”

“I’ll tell Varric to get his quill and ink ready,” she replies, expecting the groan that follows the end of her sentence. Give and take, push and pull, cautious and reckless--she is used to him, perhaps.

“I will burn every piece of parchment he writes on,” Zeus vows. He closes his eyes, runs a hand through his hair. “Take care of him, yes?”

“We don’t exactly get on excellently,” she cautions, but shrugs and nods anyway. “I’ll try my best to keep him out of trouble--or at least, more trouble than he can write down.”

She gets a smile, a full on smile at that--one that reaches his eyes and lightens them. After a minute though, the smile fades, and his tired eyes sharpen just enough. Zeus steps closer until they are about a foot part. To anyone else she imagines they would see this as a threat of sorts, but in the short time she’s come to sort of know him, she understands.

“Good luck with Corypheus,” he says softly. “When you kick his ass, please add in a hit for me.”

“Only the best,” she says, and gestures towards the staff in the corner of the room--right where she doesn’t have to look at it.

He nods, and then turns sharply to leave. She watches as he pauses by the door and looks back at her. “My father would have liked you,” he says, sounding almost annoyed at that. “Find that mirror, Trevelyan. Meet your gaze. Don’t let anyone tell you that you cannot make the hard decisions.” Without waiting for an answer, he pulls the door opens and strides out, letting the door slam shut.

_Find that mirror._

She collapses back into the chair, hand over her face.

“I hope you’re happy,” she mutters. “You would’ve found him hilarious, brother.”

_Find that mirror._

Trevelyan wonders what she’ll see.


End file.
